KR Alexander

With a premise like accidentally killing your best friend and she pops into school the next day like nothing happened, how can this book go wrong?

By being a Goosebumps book with just as poor character development as Goosebumps.

Strap in. I got a lot to say.

Our main character is Samantha, she's a bully why is she a bully? You don't get to find that out until nearly the end of the book. She is bullying her best friend Rachel and within thirty pages kills her. Why does he kill Rachel? Because she's a bully and she randomly corners her in front of a lake and shoves her in and all of the spirits that are in the lake grab her and pull her in.

Samantha almost feels bad but then goes home thinking that character deserves to die. She proceeds to be upset and constantly hint at what drove her and Rachel apart but also made her forever bully Rachel and make Rachel scared and upset and do her homework for her.

I'm not sure why I should care for this character because she is an outright bully and she is hurting everyone around her and her parents are apparently having a divorce so that should be why I feel bad for her? She just killed somebody and now everything after her killing Rachel feels kind of moot in comparison.

Like the summary on the back says, Rachel comes back and everything seemingly is normal, except Samantha is still a bully but scared of Rachel specifically. So Rachel is now existing bully free.

We see that Rachel barely interacts with anybody and apparently her last friend was Samantha but also Samantha's last friend was Rachel. It's a really weird dynamic and when the reveal near the finale of the book is shown for why they fell apart it's kind of stupid to realize that they've been so codependent yet also divided over the simple little event that they didn't want to happen.

So one day somebody read Rachel's book out loud and it was her journal it to the entire classroom and it was about how she felt bad for Samantha because her parents were going to divorce. And how Samantha was such a shitty person that Rachel even wondered if she should feel bad for her. Which to be fair, she's a kid so yes, but she's a shitty kid so, not too much.

And from then on Samantha vows to hurt everyone around her who even looks at her like they care.

Aight. That's stupid.

But the stupidity isn't over, because Rachel dies. Rachel actually gets a second chance to return and be alive and she still sacrifices herself for Samantha. Samantha who vows at the end to become a better person and be a good person. Then she takes the binder with all of her memories between her and Rachel and throws it into the lake so Rachel can have them back. Even though Rachel of all people would have the best while Samantha would need them to remind herself why she's trying to be better.

So the good character dies in a character that's barely redeemed themselves lives. This book really wanted us to feel fridged. A fridging mess.

I could not find anything really to make me care about Samantha, and Jessica her sister is hardly a character so both of them surviving at the end left me feeling nothing. They both desperately needed more development and less focus on racial who clearly deserved redemption and to live again. The wrong characters die and the wrong ones survived. What a mucky mess.

Samantha is no last girl, more like a trash girl.

2 stars.… (mais)

"I knew little place this old, this abandoned, should smell like must and moss and decay."

Author doesn't know how to spell musk the entire book and I giggled at it.

Written very much like a Goosebumps book this also suffers from the goosebump plot problems. For one we have Josie who is the sister who spends the entire book being mean, her whole thing is she knows something but she won't share that something, so she blames her sister and is a mean jerk about it the entire book. Josie has no redeeming traits to her. Like she yells at her sister Anna constantly, blames her every time something goes wrong, and suspects her so much that she can't have a normal conversation with her. All while refusing to tell her why she's upset and basically causing the problem.

The book is written like we should blame Anna for causing the problem but if Josie spoke up at any moment we would have the problem fixed because Anna would know what was erased from her memories. But Josie just can't have a civil conversation with her sister at all.

So in the vein of Goosebumps the main character blames themselves for what the secondary character causes. Likewise, and the vein of Goosebumps there is no reason to care about Josie besides Anna's cares about her.

There are me and young kids but this is a advanced level of cruelty, Josie never displays any kindness and even calls and a monster and basically goads her into causing all the problems.

The mom is the only parent in this situation but she's barely there. She's an obstacle at best and somehow siding with Josie every time that Josie has a complaint or problem to the point that she takes the other daughter's toys away at worst.

There's a dissonance between this family that is too big for me to believe, somehow the mother is oblivious to all of the magical elements yet they're all scattered about and obvious for her to see and read, but also she has been so busy that she has missed her child having magical powers and all of the incidents with her friends. Did nobody tell this mother? This book gave me more questions than answers and it's a one-off. I would like to know how the mother was never called but because these kids couldn't sleep after being turned into dolls. Or maybe how she handled the grandmother telling her anything? Or even if Josie snitched on her? Josie can't just say she doesn't want dolls and the mother not ask her why she doesn't want dolls in the house? They had to have had a conversation but nothing came from it?

Naturally by the end everything is resolved and somehow everyone is okay even though Anna is still isolated and alone save her family. The magic doesn't leave but it has an almost cliffhanger but we know it's a one-off so it's just an open-ended story.

I personally don't hate this book I find it interesting but it didn't bring anything new, dolls alone cannot save it. It made dolls creepy in a lot of ways and it touched on something that's lesser used but it just didn't bring new enough material to save it in my review. If it didn't have the boring Goosebumps problem with a character who's just an asshole the entire time and a character who's the protagonist being guilted all the time, it could have been a four-star book. But it's sadly falters and becomes nobody believes her and the people who do believe her won't communicate with her. An isolation and causation mess.

2.5 stars.
It's a Goosebumps book by another name and author.… (mais)

SPOILERS AHEAD

I'm a middle school librarian who read this book to make sure the content was appropriate for my students. The "fear level" is appropriate for this age group, but I would not recommend it to any child who is terrified of clowns. Horror is not a genre I genuinely like nor read, and this book didn't change my mind on that. BUT I hope my thoughts are helpful for librarians and parents alike.

Two Sentence Summary: A group of 8th graders and high school freshmen receive ominous notes on Halloween telling them to go to the graveyard. What they find there begins a series of nightmares and freakish events that force them to face their deepest fears.

The story is pretty straightforward, which is good for middle schoolers and boring for adults. The fears addressed are sharks, clowns, snakes, ghosts, and being buried alive. One character, Kyle, fears snakes, but it's revealed that what he really fears is his abusive father. The abuse is handled appropriately for this age, but I definitely felt like his dad played a lot into the "stereotypical bad father" trope. The things he said and did were very generic. While tropes aren't necessarily bad for middle schoolers, it makes the characters feel fake. What adds to that is that every time snakes are brought up, so is Kyle's abusive dad. Over and over again. Another thing that happens repeatedly is the characters knowing something only through some "deep pit in their stomach". The situation may look one way, but then the character knows "deep down" it's something else. This happens too many times. It wasn't until the end that I thought "I've read this before..."

The part when readers find out Caroline's mom died and that she and her dad didn't say anything to anyone about it was unbelievable. How could people not know? In schools, news like that spreads whether or not it's put in the newspaper. The creepiest part was when her dead mother, who is actually just the clown acting like her mother, tries to get her to join her in the grave. That is a little intense for middle school. My final qualm with this book is how Caroline gets buried alive and her friends IMMEDIATELY think she's dead. First, she didn't need to get fully buried (in my opinion) and second, she was not buried long enough to think she was dead. Was that just because they were young and didn't know any better? Not sure.

LibraryThing* Rating: 3 Stars - I think students will like it more than I did
Book Lady* Rating: 1 Star - Not for me

I liked the...
- Positive message
- Use of teamwork to fight the clown

I disliked the...
- Representation of the parents/lack thereof
- Title - "fear" is relevant but "zone"???

Content: 7th Grade and up, frightening scenes and threat of death

Recommended for students who like horror books and are ready to take it up a notch.

*LibraryThing rating takes into consideration the intended audience's comprehension and interests.
**Book Lady Rating is what I would give it if I based it on my personal preference and likes/dislikes.… (mais)

This book had potential to be really scary, but I found that the writing style constantly diffused the tension. This would be a good book for kids on the younger side of middle grade who like scary stories. The author holds your hand throughout and kind of gives you the idea of what you should think. There's a lot of "I trusted her. She's my friend....or is she?" dun dun DUN!!! And I found it tiring after a while.

Overall, this is a quick read with an interesting premise that I wish was realized better.… (mais)